NTS Bulletin February 2018

Abstract

Resilience and innovation are the themes for Singapore’s chairmanship of ASEAN this year, to achieve the twin goals of regional order amid emerging security challenges, and greater regional economic integration and connectivity. An initiative proposed by Singapore, which has received support at the recent Foreign Ministers Retreat this month, is the development of an ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN). We argue that this has potential to contribute to the long-term goal of regional economic integration, bridging development gaps, especially if further cascaded to other cities in future, while avoiding pitfalls in the process of becoming smart cities.